In early 2013, the government of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper introduced new science communications procedures that threatened the publication rights of an American scientist who had been working in the Arctic with Canadian researchers since 2003.

This was the first time the Canadian government’s draconian confidentiality rules had infringed on the scientific freedom of an international academic – or, at least, it was the first time such an incident had been made known. Professor Andreas Muenchow from the University of Delaware publicly refused to sign a government agreement that threatened to “sign away [his] freedom to speak, publish, educate, learn and share.”

... the Canadian government has been silencing the voices of scientists speaking out on the threat of fossil-fuel extraction and burning and the damaging impacts they are having on our climate. I have close friends in the Canadian scientific community who say they have personally been subjected to these heavy-handed policies. Why? Because the implications of their research are inconvenient to the powerful fossil-fuel interests that seem to now run the Canadian government.

The Harper administration has made it clear that all research related to Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), even that conducted with the help of outside parties, is “deemed to be confidential.” According to its new policy, no involved party “may release such information to others in any way whatsoever without prior written authorization of the other party.” Silently released behind the doors of the DFO, the new protocol only came to light after an anonymous researcher published the document online.

The new restrictions constitute just one of many new protocols that the Harper government has introduced since 2006 that restrict the flow of scientific communication, not just in Canada, but within the global scientific community. [emphasis mine]